Welcome to Project: Gorgon!

Project: Gorgon is a 3D fantasy MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. We won't be guiding you through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project: Gorgon also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

The Project: Gorgon development team is led by industry veteran Eric Heimburg. Eric has over a decade of experience working as a Senior and Lead Engineer, Developer, Designer and Producer on successful games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online and other successful Massively Multiplayer Online Games.

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Event Blog: Crafting Caravan 2.0

Hello everyone!
Today, I want to talk about all of the changes that have been made with the newly revised Crafting Caravan event.

More Tasks
Using the game's live event system, we were restricted in the way we could deliver parallel tasks without there being one entity per task given. Looking forward, the casino's theater room would have filled up with NPCs very quickly as more levels were unlocked and more craft skills introduced. By taking this event and fully converting it to use the game's quest system and NPC tech, we are now able to provide unlimited tasks with much fewer NPCs.

The tasks have been broken down into 5 tiers per craft skill:

Tier 1 - level 10

Tier 2 - level 30

Tier 3 - level 50

Tier 4 - level 70

Tier 5 - level 90

Now, particular recipes for each skill don't exactly fall to those lines, but this is the general breakdown. Some Tier 1 tasks may require level 13 in that skill, some others 14 or even just 10. When you approach one of the NPCs and check their favors, if you meet the level requirements for the recipes needed to complete the task, it will show on the list. If you do not see any tasks initially, then you do not meet the level requirements.

There are also a couple of exceptions to this format. Because alchemy is still fairly restricted in level, there are only tasks for level 20 and 40. This will be adjusted to the proper format once more levels have been unlocked. Also for jewelry crafting, since the skill and recipes start at the level 50 range, only tiers 3-5 will be possible.

Reset times for tasks will depend on the tier of the task. Timers currently are set as:

Tiers 1, 2 and 3 - 12 hour reset timer

Tiers 4 and 5 - 18 hour reset timer

Xp rewards for all tasks are based off of the first-use xp value for everything crafted in the task. Most values have been rounded off and are not exact.

New favor and barter system
I had to ask myself, "What about all the people who have maxed out their crafting skills? Why would they bother with this event?" Both are very good questions! So with this new version of the event, we have added something that can invite participation beyond the need for crafting xp. This event includes Orran, the Caravan Leader. You may remember him as one of the blacksmith NPCs in the previous version. Well, he got a promotion! Orran will provide special random barters for rare crafting items plus other goodies.

In order to unlock bartering with Orran, and to increase the number of barters you can do each round, you need to gain favor with him. The way you gain favor in this event is a little different than the conventional 'do a favor for someone to gain favor with them'. For the Crafting Caravan, you must complete the crafting tasks of all the members of the caravan to gain favor with their leader. The more tasks you can complete, the faster you can gain favor. Favor rewards break down like this:

Orran will remember you from event to event. Favor will retain and accumulate from event to event. You will need to reach the comfortable level to unlock his barter options, which you will then be able to barter with him once per barter round. The barter rounds work similar to Midge in the Fae Realm. You can earn an additional barter per round at the favor levels of friends, like family and soul mates for a total of 4 barters per round.

Now, what are you going to have to barter, you ask? When you complete any tier 2 or higher task, you will receive one Crafter's Guild Token. These tokens are the currency honored among the members of the caravan. Orran will gladly take them off your hands in exchange for several different items!

Several different items are available, including but not limited to, rare crafting materials and some rare dye colors. Currently, there are 22 different items that could be available for barter. More items will be added as more craft skills are added and more levels are unlocked, including some special items that can only be acquired during the caravan event!

Pricing on the current barter items is just a first revision. I'm going to need feedback from everyone after the event on how much favor you were able to gain and how many tokens you were able to build up. I can take this information and use it to make any adjustments to the pricing for later events. The special event only items will not be available for this run of the event. They will be added in a later run. For all those first timers to this event, the Crafting Caravan will come to visit about every 4 months.

I hope everyone enjoys the new and improved version of this event, and I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback so I can make it even better! We'll see you in game!

I already mentioned this to you in game but overall the caravan prices feel hugely misplaced.

15 tokens for a feather : commonly sold for 2-4k. you can farm these with two people in good 70 gear.
10 tokens for 2 vervadium : you can get a bunch every day mining or trade/buy it for 3-5k each.
10 tokens for 2 fae felt : this one kinda feels ok as fae felt is a super big pain to farm. Is the price justified for a once every 4 months caravan?

I've been checking for the black dye over and over again and have not seen it come up yet. For one trading round the same two items repeated exactly the same trades as the last session.

I suspect you probably did not want it to be this way but overall it feels like: black dye or gtfo.

That being said the caravan is super awesome for skill boosting and catching up on a few months of lost play time.
Events like this really help make Project Gorgon shine as a super cool indy game.

I guess really I would have liked to see some items related to trade skills that are convenient/make trade skils easier/save inventory space (maybe all of the above).Consider as an example some rewards you could have made for the trade caravan. Keep the barter idea but instead have it rotate which trade has an item listed.

Let's say toolcrafting is selected (maybe the person who has tokens should be able to pick the category with enough faction).

For 5 tokens you can get a tack hammer that loses 10% durability when a tack hammer would normally be destroyed.

For 20 tokens you can get a tack hammer that loses 2% durability when a tack hammer would normally be destroyed (requires either 50 Blacksmithing or 50 Toolcrafting to use and is bound to your account - just like player made armor)

For 50 tokens you can get an unbreakable tack hammer that requires either 75 Toolcrafting or Blacksmithing (still bound to your account).

The barter list would include a selection of "unbreakable" tools as very strong tools for a wide array of tradeskills such as an unbreakable firkin. I see an unlimited potential for ideas of prizes that are far more covetous than black dye. Imagine for example an expert carding tool for tailors that either reduces the cotton count for carding by 1, can card cotton anywhere, or gives a +10% chance (stacking with dance and display bonuses) for more perfect cotton.

Let's say Dye is selected.

You can buy the (crappy) non-black dyes as normal. Or you can learn how to make the dye for 25 tokens - with an agreed promise that you will only dye your own armor. In other words you could forever more make 'soulbound' dye once learned that can only dye your armor but anyone who wants it on their clothes would have to get it for themselves. This would still make a single dye purchase valuable because you could dye a special piece of armor you made and transform something like a piece of pocket gear to be even more appealing.

Black Dye of course would never be teachable as you want it to be artificially rare.

I've asked repeatedly if anyone has seen black dye available for trade. I've asked if anyone has successfully traded for black dye. The answer so far to both questions is : No. I see people buying up tokens for around 3k each which means that if it were available black dye would be worth 150k each. And this makes the other prices atrociously silly because now that feather is valued in tokens at 45,000 councils.

Let's say some player wants to make a nice set of armor but has no friends to run dungeons with. He is a bard and wants to make a nice set of bard armor. What if the feather cost a single token? If he crafts on a majority of the quests during the weekend he might scrape together 30 tokens. Talk to people who have a yellow bard hat and ask them how many feathers it took for their lvl 70/80 hats. Someone told me they spent over 120 feathers for their hat.

As for crystals you get from mining... you can grind out the skill necessary for that in a weekend. Then you can mine every day and get Crystals in under an hour. You can go out and get 15 yellow crystals in a fraction of the time it takes to craft 15 tokens. That really bothers me in terms of the effort you put into earning those tokens and what you get as the reward.

You're already getting the xp for completing the caravan quests. That is the major reward.

I think of the tokens just as an added bonus. If people have already maxed their trade skills and are just doing caravan quests for tokens, they are already filthy rich (presumably) so they don't need to be getting valuable things from the tokens anyways.

Also some of your suggestions sound extremely overpowered (the unbreakable things).

Personally i like how the balance is for the crafting caravan. Really nice reward xp if you are in the level 30 range (i went up from 32 cheesemaking to almost 50 already just this weekend). For skills you are already maxed or close to maxed you can skip the quests to concentrate on skills you are weak in.

If the rewards from tokens were extremely valuable (instead of just fun, desirable, but far from game-breaking cosmetic stuff or small amounts of hard to find items) then i think i would feel compelled to grind away every quest just to farm tokens.

I already mentioned this to you in game but overall the caravan prices feel hugely misplaced.

15 tokens for a feather : commonly sold for 2-4k. you can farm these with two people in good 70 gear.
10 tokens for 2 vervadium : you can get a bunch every day mining or trade/buy it for 3-5k each.
10 tokens for 2 fae felt : this one kinda feels ok as fae felt is a super big pain to farm. Is the price justified for a once every 4 months caravan?

*sigh*

Originally Posted by mrwarp

Pricing on the current barter items is just a first revision. I'm going to need feedback from everyone after the event on how much favor you were able to gain and how many tokens you were able to build up. I can take this information and use it to make any adjustments to the pricing for later events. The special event only items will not be available for this run of the event. They will be added in a later run.

I thought that was addressed fairly clearly. Right now all I have to go on is the extreme case scenario. Someone doing all of the tasks for the length of the event. With what is currently available, that would produce approximately 1,950 favor with Orran and 170 tokens per character. There is no way for me to know how much or how little any given player is going to do. This is why some pretty bland pricing was used and is also why the special items were not added for this run. Once the event has ended and people are feeding me that information, I can better balance the pricing for future events, as I said I would.

I was going to do the flower arrangement one, 10 violet bouquets but 40 flowers to grow is alot, so I didnt try it. It seems like way too much trouble, maybe it should be for less bouquets. The others for tailor, leather, and cheese are ok but the 'beef and broccoli' one was messed up, you had to make 20 instead of 10, too many mats.

Ok, so difficulty/investment needed is not equal among all tasks. Flower arrangmnet (becaus eof flowers and additional mats) and Jewelry Crafting (because of copper) are, imo, 'harder' to complete than others.

But beside those two, I think that task are rather fair. Mycology is a bit annoying one, but not too hard.

Having only 1 NPC per trade skill was definitly good idea.

Tokens - I have 53 tokens, but still have few tasks I can complete - I might end up with around 60 tokens. As for bartering - it might be good idea to increase number of options per every round. Instead of 2, give use 3 or 4 (maybe make it increase with favor, the same way number of trades increases).

From what I saw so far barter options are not too exciting - maybe for someoen who highly values they look, but since i'm pretty much pernament wolf, I don't care about dyes. I understand this is experimental run, and more rewards will be added in the future. I wasn't farmign too hard, and I think not many peopel will go out of they way to farm extra hard, unless potential rewards would be really good.

Speakign of rewards, here are few suggestions:
- Inventory extension
- persoanl, portable storage, liek portabel Council storage machine. SOmethign that would allow us acce sout storage when in the field.
- Gear upgrades/crafting gear - some kid of agumentations that can't be aquire in any other way (preferably something crafting-related). Or craftign gear, that gives a lot of additional inventory, increased chance for better items when crafting, or chance to not consume mats when crafting. Or gathering gear - with greatly reduced monster aggro range, movement speed, etc.
- As @Glythe mentioned, unbrekable tools/portable work stations would be nice too.